Russia (Country threat level – 3):

On 21 August 2009 at least two suicide bomb attacks were reported in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital. The blasts took place within 15 minutes of each other outside a café and a store selling food in the Leninsky district. The attacks targeted police vehicles, and at least four police officers were killed; other people, including civilians, were injured. Some sources are reporting that up to three additional attacks occurred, but no details about those incidents are known.

Meanwhile, the Chechen rebel group Riyadus Salikhiin claimed on 21 August that it was responsible for the attack on a police station in Nazran, Ingushetia, and the incident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant in Siberia, both of which occurred on 17 August. In an online posting, the group stated that an anti-tank grenade with a timer caused the collapse of the turbine room at the plant and that it was part of a larger campaign to stage an “economic war” against Russia with attacks against oil and gas pipelines, power stations and other facilities. Russian officials, however, have called the claims that the plant disaster was the result of sabotage “idiotic.”